[mijoro]

Its probably because its such a transient city that no one bothers to get to know anyone till they have been there a while, otherwise whats the point. I guess its that kind of thinking, I live in a tourist city and its the same sort of deal here also.

[BBMW]

Maybe comparing the entire state of CT to one district in NV is not quite fair. Why don't you compare one city, maybe Bridgeport to LV.

Also, maybe the comparison should be cost equalized. Yes, Greenwich schools will likely be better than Vegas schools, but a house in Greenwich is likely to set you back seven figures.

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

Let's compare:

Clark County School District | Nevada | Best High Schools | US News

Search Connecticut High Schools | US News


Anyone who can say with a straight face that there is any kind of parity between Connecticut schools and Clark County schools is almost certainly selling something.

[d.sandor]

Originally Posted by BBMW

Maybe comparing the entire state of CT to one district in NV is not quite fair. Why don't you compare one city, maybe Bridgeport to LV.

Also, maybe the comparison should be cost equalized. Yes, Greenwich schools will likely be better than Vegas schools, but a house in Greenwich is likely to set you back seven figures.

Well i was saying southwest CT, which is probably the size of LV. Bridgeport is way smaller than LV. By the time i get from where i am now to north summerlin i could have went through 10 towns on 95 in CT.

[ScoopLV]

Originally Posted by BBMW

Maybe comparing the entire state of CT to one district in NV is not quite fair. Why don't you compare one city, maybe Bridgeport to LV.

Also, maybe the comparison should be cost equalized. Yes, Greenwich schools will likely be better than Vegas schools, but a house in Greenwich is likely to set you back seven figures.

I'm not the person who, in this thread, said, "you will find schools quite competitive with the CT public schools" if somehow we move to a mythical place in Clark County where there are schools that are competitive with the CT public schools.

That is akin to saying, "If you buy the right Kia, you will find it quite competitive with a Ferrari." The only way that's going to work is to find the worst Ferrari ever made and the best Kia. In order to compare Clark County with CT, you really do have to dredge down to the level of Bridgeport.

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I'm not the person who, in this thread, said, "you will find schools quite competitive with the CT public schools" if somehow we move to a mythical place in Clark County where there are schools that are competitive with the CT public schools.

That is akin to saying, "If you buy the right Kia, you will find it quite competitive with a Ferrari." The only way that's going to work is to find the worst Ferrari ever made and the best Kia. In order to compare Clark County with CT, you really do have to dredge down to the level of Bridgeport.

Nonsense. If you look at the areas with demographics similar to Las Vegas you will find similar schools.

If you can pay 2 million for a house you send your kids to Meadows which is competitive to Stanford or high end CN.

[BBMW]

I think the fact that southwestern CT has some of the richest towns in the country. I think that has the effect of skewing the results a bit.

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I'm not the person who, in this thread, said, "you will find schools quite competitive with the CT public schools" if somehow we move to a mythical place in Clark County where there are schools that are competitive with the CT public schools.

That is akin to saying, "If you buy the right Kia, you will find it quite competitive with a Ferrari." The only way that's going to work is to find the worst Ferrari ever made and the best Kia. In order to compare Clark County with CT, you really do have to dredge down to the level of Bridgeport.

[ScoopLV]

Originally Posted by BBMW

I think the fact that southwestern CT has some of the richest towns in the country. I think that has the effect of skewing the results a bit.

I absolutely agree with you.

I simply do not understand the rose-colored insistence by a handful of C-D users that the schools in Clark County are "as good as any in the country." (Anyone who says they can steer a client into a neighborhood with schools that are "quite competitive with the CT public schools" is basically claiming CCSD schools can be as good as any in the country.) That displays a break from reality of Charlie Sheen proportions.

One thing Connecticut has in abundance is excellent colleges and universities. I maintain that by raising the bar at the university level, the secondary schools need to fall in line so that they can matriculate their students into these universities. Yale, Wesleyan, UConn (med and law particularly), and even schools like Quinnipiac (with their statistics and probability programs) are a big reason why Connecticut secondary schools are so much better than what we have. UNLV is well regarded for their hospitality program and little else. We don't have the med school, the law school, the engineering school or the research facilities.

Demographics matter, too. I don't deny that. But Las Vegas is a rich enough city that we should have a better school system -- from the university level all the way down.

Las Vegas has low taxes, lots of concerts, good restaurants, and a low cost of living. We do not have world-class schools, top-level professional sports, or mild summers. And the only the most rose-colored, Kool-Aid drinking cheerleaders (who have something to sell) are going to claim otherwise.

[BBMW]

I live in NYC. We have some excellent colleges (Columbia, NYU.) With the exception of a handful of local schools, I would never put a kid into the NYC school system. I could pay $25K/year for private school (if you can get a kid in, which isn't easy), but that's ridiculous. And, in point of fact that's pretty much the situation in Vegas also.

What the NY metro has, which Vegas doesn't, is that most of the towns have independent school districts. So if you have the bucks to by an expensive house, and pay outrageous property taxes, you can get excellent public schools. If I had kids, and had to stay in NY metro, that's what I'd probably do.

This is also what Vegas should do, break up the CCSD, and let each individual city and township form and fund it's own school district. If the locals want to spend more on education, and are willing to foot the taxes for it (and I bet some of the local areas would) they can. They ones that don't want to, don't have to.

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I absolutely agree with you.

I simply do not understand the rose-colored insistence by a handful of C-D users that the schools in Clark County are "as good as any in the country." (Anyone who says they can steer a client into a neighborhood with schools that are "quite competitive with the CT public schools" is basically claiming CCSD schools can be as good as any in the country.) That displays a break from reality of Charlie Sheen proportions.

One thing Connecticut has in abundance is excellent colleges and universities. I maintain that by raising the bar at the university level, the secondary schools need to fall in line so that they can matriculate their students into these universities. Yale, Wesleyan, UConn (med and law particularly), and even schools like Quinnipiac (with their statistics and probability programs) are a big reason why Connecticut secondary schools are so much better than what we have. UNLV is well regarded for their hospitality program and little else. We don't have the med school, the law school, the engineering school or the research facilities.

Demographics matter, too. I don't deny that. But Las Vegas is a rich enough city that we should have a better school system -- from the university level all the way down.

Las Vegas has low taxes, lots of concerts, good restaurants, and a low cost of living. We do not have world-class schools, top-level professional sports, or mild summers. And the only the most rose-colored, Kool-Aid drinking cheerleaders (who have something to sell) are going to claim otherwise.

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by BBMW

I live in NYC. We have some excellent colleges (Columbia, NYU.) With the exception of a handful of local schools, I would never put a kid into the NYC school system. I could pay $25K/year for private school (if you can get a kid in, which isn't easy), but that's ridiculous. And, in point of fact that's pretty much the situation in Vegas also.

What the NY metro has, which Vegas doesn't, is that most of the towns have independent school districts. So if you have the bucks to by an expensive house, and pay outrageous property taxes, you can get excellent public schools. If I had kids, and had to stay in NY metro, that's what I'd probably do.

This is also what Vegas should do, break up the CCSD, and let each individual city and township form and fund it's own school district. If the locals want to spend more on education, and are willing to foot the taxes for it (and I bet some of the local areas would) they can. They ones that don't want to, don't have to.

Does not really work that way. To start off with local government is not congruent with the school system.

In general the City of Las Vegas would get the dregs and some of the best but would certainly have exactly the same problem CCSD has now. Henderson would make out a bit better. NLV would do badly and Clark County would be a geographic mess. You could of course do the other thing simply instituting school districts with no ties to existing communities but geographically congruent. This could enable a couple of districts to cover the 215 and out band leaving the central core to rot.

The under funding of schools is actually the cause of a lot of the problems and is not a Nevada problem same thing in CA and AZ and NM. Utah does better though it spends no more...homogeneous population.

CA used to be set up about as you describe it. In fact the creation of the Palo Verde schools there is exactly the sort of maneuver being discussed. However the CA courts found the system unconstitutional to the CA Constitution as it did not provide a uniform education. So much of what has gone on sense has been to even out the expenditures in each district.

I have three grandchildren in the CT schools system. They go to Oakdale, CT schools. Those schools are fine and well loved but would come no where near the better schools in Las Vegas.

The one thing about which Scoop and I may agree is that LV has never really established a selective high school. That is not a simple discussion though. Many hold that such high schools are bad for the system in generally as they sweep the upper 2% from all the other schools. That may well prevent the implementation of upper level courses in the better high schools.

[BBMW]

^
It's true that breaking up CCSD along the lines of the cities embedded in Clark County may not improve things much for the better areas. But if I lived somewhere like Green Vally/McDonald Ranch or Summerlin, and had kids in public schools, I'd be mightily agitating to break off from CCSD. I'd want my own property taxes to pay for my kids, not subsidize the low income areas.